For the Love of Cooking.

It's a pretty safe bet, considering her followers top 4,600 (!!!), that I'm the last person to hear of this cooking blog, but just in case I'm the second-to-last, I wanted to share this great site I came across today. Such wonderful recipes!

Now if only I had time and energy to spend in the kitchen...

Vegan Chocolate (Cup)cake Recipe.

Today I got quite a bit done. I created some posts about celeb gossip (doesn't sound so productive, when you put it that way!), wrote about breastfeeding, and kicked off trial run numero uno of Ava's birthday cake. I've baked about a trillion cakes of all sorts in my lifetime, but never a vegan chocolate cake. That is, until today.

I didn't take any pictures because I am an idiot, but let me assure you, it was TASTY. I mean, seriously scrumptious, I-may-be-a-vegan-convert type of tasty. I'm pretty sure that trial number one was such a raging success that we've found our birthday cake recipe, friends!

Without further adieu:

Easiest Chocolate Cake:

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cups organic all-purpose flour
2 cups organic cane sugar
1 cup organic unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon organic vanilla extract
2/3 cup organic canola oil
2 teaspoons organic white vinegar
2 cups cold water

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 8- or 9-inch round cake pans, or place liners in 2 muffin pans for 24 cupcakes. Set aside.
In a large bowl, sift the dry ingredients together. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, mix the vanilla extract, oil, vinegar, and cold water.
Slowly whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, being careful not to overmix. The mixture will be quite wet, but this is okay.
Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. For cupcakes, the baking time is 24 to 26 minutes.
Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack to cool.

I chose cupcakes, mainly because I'm leaning towards doing cupcakes for her birthday, with a little Ava-sized smash cake for her to demolish. Seeing as how the lovely Danielle posted this cupcake-cake design for me earlier, I'm glad I did. Thank you, Danielle! That looks awesome!

I guess I know what is on the agenda for later this week...

Slow Cooker Carrot Cake

Did YOU know you could make a cake in a slow cooker?! I surely didn't! That is, until I ran across this *amazing* cookbook, Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger, and found a whole section on desserts, some of which were dairy-free. Eager to stuff my face and silence my inner fat girl, I scoured my pantry, came up with a few choice items, and went to work. Here's a recipe I hope you'll enjoy as much as I do!

Slow Cooker Carrot Cake

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 c. water
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs
1 1/4 c. shredded carrots (2-3 medium carrots)
3 tbsp. chopped walnuts (optional)

*Notice the lack of dairy!!!*

Directions
-Grease a medium or large slow cooker bowl - I used my large capacity cooker for this.
-In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, spices, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the water, oil and eggs. Incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry, making sure the dry ingredients are fully moistened. Add the carrots and, if using, the walnuts. Pour into the crock pot and cook on high for 1.5-2 hours, until puffed and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
-Top with powdered sugar, eat plain, or frost with decadent cream cheese icing.

Enjoy! This is one tasty cake!

Another Easy Dairy-Free Dinner Idea...

First off, go enter my book giveaway if you haven't already, which many of you haven't :) As of right now, your chances of winning are high - haha...

OK, so as the title promised, here's yet another dairy-free dinner idea for any of you with milk-sensitive babies. If you keep kosher or pork just isn't your thing, see this post for the first recipe in this dairy-free series - delicious stuffed peppers!

Cherry Coke Pork Roast:

1 2-4 lb. Boston butt roast
1 can Cherry Coke
BBQ Sauce of your choice - I like local brand Stubb's sauces or Cattlemen's Smokehouse

That's seriously all you need. Easy-peasy, right?

Put roast in crock pot. Salt and/or pepper to taste. Pour cherry coke over roast. Cook on low 8-10 hours, depending on your needs. The longer you cook it, the more tender the roast will be.

When the roast is finished, shred with two forks. Pour BBQ sauce over shredded meat and mix until moistened. Serve either on hamburger buns or in tortillas. Serves 2 for a week, or a houseful for a weekend!

**For a completely dairy-free meal, we eat this with black beans and rice (sans butter).

Enjoy!

Dairy Free's The Way For Me.

...not really. I'm just trying to psych myself out so I don't feel as defeated and forlorn as I do right now, looking down the barrel of a dairy-free future.

OK, OK, so maybe that's a bit dramatic, but if you think so, YOU try abstaining from all dairy for the past nearly four months, with no end in sight.

Not only can I not have dairy, but I just read this entire article (and many more afterwards that said the same thing) saying that I should avoid peanuts and peanut butter since A has a dairy allergy, so as not to predispose her to a peanut allergy. WHAT?!?!?! First off, that's news to me, and as such I've been stuffing my face with peanut butter for the past six months. Seriously, I cannot get enough of the stuff. Second, WTF. How am I going to live without dairy OR peanut butter? Geeeeeeeeeeeez.

OK, done crying now. I'm getting over it. It's the best thing for her so that I can continue to breastfeed and give her every advantage of breastmilk, which is important to me. More important than ice cream, or chocolate, or apples and peanut butter. Kind of.

Anyhow, seeing as how I'm stuck in this dairy-free lifestyle until I (or A, really) choose to discontinue breastfeeding, which isn't in the foreseeable future, it's time to stop whining and start making some fantastic dairy-free food.

Here is a dish that has been a favorite around this house of late:

Stuffed Bell Peppers (serves 2)
2 large bell peppers, shaped well for standing and being stuffed
1/2 lb. ground beef, give or take
1-2 cups rice (your preference - I like more)
1 14 oz. can tomato sauce
1/4 diced white or yellow onion
1 clove garlic, diced
A splash of Worchestershire sauce
Salt & Pepper to taste

Preheat the over to 400 degrees. In a medium skillet, brown the ground beef. Drain. Add onion and garlic to the pan with the meat, cook on medium heat until fragrant.

In a medium bowl, combine meat mixture, tomato sauce, worchestershire sauce and salt and pepper. Add rice. Mix until moistened.

Slice a straight, clean line into the tops of the peppers. Set the tops aside. Remove hull and seeds, and set pepper "shells" into an 8x8 pan. Fill with an inch of water. Scoop filling from bowl and stuff into peppers, packing tightly. Place tops back onto peppers, and place into your preheated oven for one hour. Enjoy!

Here's our finished product:



Don't forget to check out my giveaway below!